This posting about the quality of the Wireless Internet connection I had in Branson will be very negative. As I get older I become less tolerant and occasionally I run into situations that make me want to scream.

For a start neither of my primary Internet Service Providers (ISP) were very robust or reliable. My Versizon Internet service was in roaming mode the entire time I was here. I had a satisfactory low speed connection for my Pocket PC (hand held PDA) but a virtually useless service from my PC Card for my laptop. It appears that Verizon does not have any of it's own towers here in Branson. My cell phone worked fine with Verizon but was in roaming mode the whole time.

My Sprint PC Card Internet connection for my laptop was a satisfactory low speed connection. Connection speeds were in the 50 to 60 Kilobytes per second range. Actually, I had to use this service for most of my work because of the local WiFi service here at the Escapee's Turkey Creek RV Village was totally unsatisfactory. I will explain more below.

My Sprint Cell Phone service was good here. As I discovered after arriving hear from Memphis, Tennessee (via Little Rock, Arkansas) Sprint had no service within about 100 miles of here until I actually arrived in Branson.

I tried using the WiFi service at the Escapee's Turkey Creek RV Village. It uses TengoInternet.com for their ISP. I have found what I believe to be the worst internet connection there is and I speak from considerable experience. I have never had to brute force my use of the internet before. I had to hit a link 3 or more times before the web page was delivered. It was like having to punch your way through a wall. First click doesn't get through, neither does the second punch but usually, not always, you can get to the next web page on the third click on the link or submit button. The resultant bandwidth was so slow you could count every byte for the page as it loads. Then it would suddenly burst a bit of high speed. This waxing and waning connection was the most exasperating internet connection I have ever had.

If you are familiar with the Firefox browser and the way it handles not being able to connect to the web site, you will have discovered the "Try Again" button. I became intimately familiar with the "Try Again" button that I hope I never see it again.

As a web programmer I rely heavily on FTPing (File Transfer Protocol) files up and back from web servers. If trying to surf the web didn't drive me nuts trying to upload and download files was a nightmare. There is nothing more maddening than to have a file which is being uploaded stall out. The problem comes when the file is only partially uploaded then the web page will not load properly and will stay that way until you can get the upload to complete. When you have to abort the transfer request several times before you can finally get the file to complete the transfer is maddening. I finally got where I used my 60K (on a good day) Sprint connection for all FTP file transfers. It was slow as a snail but once I started an upload or download I could rest assured that it would most likely complete without having to cancel, restart, cancel and restart again and again and again for each and every file.

Believe it or not FTPing with Sprint's 60KB/sec connection was 4 or more times faster than TengoInternet.com's High Speed connection.

As I mentioned above the ISP was TengoInternet.com. The service here may or may not reflect their service in other areas. The problem may actually be prontonetworks.com. TengoInternet.com appears to lease it's connection to the backbone from prontonetworks.com. So the connection problems may actually be from that service. The reason I say that is I had almost no problems connecting to the Wireless access point which is administered by TengoInternet.com. All the problems I experienced were after I connected to the service which I believe would be prontonetworks.com. Or it could be a little further up the chain. I just can't be sure from a subscriber connection.

If you are using TengoInternet.com from their many access points and experience similar or different qualities of service feel free to add comments to this blog.